Gardening as a hobby and as a necessity to grow food, has been a human endeavor for thousands of years. In earlier times when land was abundant home gardens of flowers, vegetables, and decorative plants, were normally planted in plots somewhere on a large area of land occupied by the home or business. Modernly, with the growth of urban areas upward, an estimated 47 million condominiums and apartments have risen, all with limited patios or garden areas for enjoyment by their occupants. Further, with the increasing value of land in the suburbs, the provision of yards and garden areas to homeowners and occupants is ever-shrinking. Many apartment dwellers in urban areas such as New York and Chicago have no yard whatsoever. Such apartments may however provide a hanging patio projecting from a side of the building to allow occupants a small area to lounge outdoors. Or, they might have a sunroom featuring skylights which allow sunlight into the room for a feeling of outdoors. Residential properties which are not multistory also suffer from the lack of a yard due to small lots or the fact that the housing is a condominium with common space for all residents which is not employable for gardens, and a small patio area where the owner is relegated to do any gardening or growing they might wish.
Consequently for a great many homeowners and renters and business occupants of commercial buildings, the area provided or available for gardening is severely limited. While this may not bother many occupants, gardening is a largely enjoyed hobby of millions of apartment, condominium, and home dwellers.
In cases of gardening in small areas such as patios, the sole choice for a resident to grow plants is through the employment of planters or pots in which the plants are grown. Such planters are frequently large rectangular or circular pots having an internal cavity defined by a sidewall and accessible through an open aperture defined by the distal edge of the sidewall.
In such planters, resident gardeners will deposit a soil mixture suitable to the intended plant that will occupy the pot or planter. Thereafter, a plant will be either started or transplanted into the soil and the gardener will have the small plot of soil contained in the planter in which to cultivate their flowers, or vegetables, or house plants, or other plants of choice.
As can be ascertained, with floor space on a patio at a premium, very few large planters can occupy the floor space before there is insufficient room to walk and work. The gardener is left with little choice but to limit their growing to a minimal amount of plants due to the floor space or a limited number of planters or pots available.
As such, there exists an unmet need, for a planter and pot device which allows for the use of airspace in small growing areas by stacking a plurality of planters above lower level planters. Such a device should be highly adaptable to allow vertical stacking of planters in an easy fashion for the user by allowing for easy engagements to supporting structures. Such a device should provide a common manner of engagement of the planters to an elevated supporting system so as to allow an interchangeability of the planters engaged to the finished structure to maximize the growing area available to the user in a small support surface footprint. Further, such a system should require little maintenance and be extremely simple to setup and employ so average homeowners can assemble and use it and configure it to their liking.
Still further, such a system should be very stable to prevent tipping of the elevated planters in wind or when watered or overgrown and heavy.
The system herein described and disclosed features a novel vertical planting system which provides for a stacked positioning of a plurality of planters sequentially above a below-situated planter. In one especially preferred mode, three planters are provided to allow a small-space gardener to have the benefit of an entire garden in a patio space no bigger than 32 inches by 17 inches.
Anchoring each elevated stack of planters is a large base planter which when filled is sufficiently larger and heavier than the overhead planters to which it provides support, and therefore, it prevents tipping of the structures. In this fashion the larger lower planter provides an anchor to the overhead structure and overhead planters which is especially stable. The base planter is formed with built-in slots or pole-stays which are of a size adapted for slidable engagement with a plurality of metal poles to hold the poles in a substantially vertical position relative to the flat support surfaced under the supporting base planter. Thus the poles when engaged in the slots achieve a substantially perpendicular alignment relative to the ground or support surface and provide an excellent and sturdy mount for overhead planters engaged thereto.
During initial assembly, these poles are inserted into the stays or slots formed into the sidewalls or a central support portion of the lower planter and remain frictionally engaged therein in a substantially tight fit. Once the support members or poles are so engaged, brackets may be engaged between the overhead planters and the vertically disposed support members. These brackets project substantially normal from the support members and parallel to the ground and can be engaged in a plurality of positions above the support surface and lower base planter to thereby allow for adjustment by the user for spacing of the planters from each other.
With the support brackets engaged, the smaller elevated planters are then engaged to the brackets which engage the poles. A number of embodiments can be employed depending on the patio or area in which the device is situated. A first preferred mode of the device features a larger base planter above which two smaller planters are suspended using pole-engaged brackets. Another mode of the device features a center mounting of the supporting poles or vertical members in the bottom base planter, and four to six overhead smaller planters hanging in pairs engaged upon opposite sides of the vertically disposed support members.
In an especially novel yet useful mode of the device, a saddle arrangement may be achieved. This mode of the device is especially well suited to patios having railings or bannisters. In this mode of the device, two planters are cooperatively engaged with a belt. The belt is then centered on the top of the railing and the two planters hang from the straps or belts on opposite sides of the railing which of course provides the support member. With the use of an additional belt the planters can also be attached to a fence for vertical display on a single side of the fence.
The support brackets for the elevated planters feature either brackets to hold the planters to vertically disposed members, or, cross members having a triangular engagement with one side of the elevated planters adapted to co-operatively engage clips on the cross member. The three point or triangular engagement has been found to be especially stable against tipping and wind lift which can be a concern on roof tops.
The planters are interchangeable with each other on their bracket engagement to the vertical pole or support member so that they may be removed and used in other spots or shifted in and out of different positions relative to each other.
Optionally, but in a particularly preferred mode of the device, wheels are engaged to the base planter to allow the entire structure to be rolled to new positions. Further, a self watering system can be included which is most important with the busy schedules of potential users.
It is thus an object of the invention to provide a planting system which takes advantage of the airspace above small patios and growing areas to provide more plant growth areas.
It is a further object of the invention to provide such a plant holding and support system which is easily assembled.
Yet another object of the invention is the provision of such a planter support system which provides interchangeable mounts from support brackets to allow any of a plurality of overhead planters to be moved to any position.
With respect to the above description and background, before explaining at least one preferred embodiment of the invention in detail, it is to be understood that the invention is not limited in its application to the details of construction and to the arrangement of the components and/or steps set forth in the following description or illustrated in the drawings. The various apparatus and methods of the invention herein described and disclosed are capable of other embodiments and of being practiced 10 and carried out in various ways which will be obvious to those skilled in the art once they review this disclosure. Also, it is to be understood that the phraseology and terminology employed herein are for the purpose of description and should not be regarded as limiting.